Aaron Swartz’s “crime”

If you haven’t seen the documentary, The Internet’s Own Boy – go watch it. Reminders of Aaron’s spirit are everywhere and just today, while searching for something else, I came across this post from Alex Stamos, Chief Information Security Officer at Yahoo.

If I had taken the stand as planned and had been asked by the prosecutor whether Aaron’s actions were “wrong”, I would probably have replied that what Aaron did would better be described as “inconsiderate”. In the same way it is inconsiderate to write a check at the supermarket while a dozen people queue up behind you or to check out every book at the library needed for a History 101 paper. It is inconsiderate to download lots of files on shared wifi or to spider Wikipedia too quickly, but none of these actions should lead to a young person being hounded for years and haunted by the possibility of a 35 year sentence.